NASLite Network Attached Storage

I'm new to NASlite and have found it very easy to use so far. My question is is there a 4 GB file size limit on files stored on NASlite? I'm attempting to back up my hard drive and it keeps conking out at 4 GB. If so, could someone direct me to a good backup program that doesn't put the whole backup in one file? I'm just using the program that came with Windows 2000 right now. Thanks!

--TF

I just found the answer to the first question in a review -- yes, there is a limit. So can anyone point me to a good backup solution? Thanks! Great product so far!

I have used "Acronis True Image" to do a image backup of my drive. Just set the max limit of each file size to under 4 Gig (I used 3.8G) and backup to the NASLite. I did a restore, from the image on the NASLite, and it worked perfectly.

HI, I have just set up my box for backups... running trueimage an 80 gig drive shows "8 days" time remaining.. this cannot be correct.. why so slow..

I've got a Netgear DG834G .. using the wired ethernet ports to connect to the naslite machine.. which is itself fitted with a netgear 100/10 card...

@Viroqua: Try Image for Windows from TerabyteUnlimited.com -- that's what I use. It allows you to cut the image file into 2 GB-sized files and it's relatively cheap.

@forumhound: That sounds a bit extreme, although I also have found that NASLite+ is a bit slow for my tastes. I did some comparative tests and it appears that I'm getting substantially sub-USB 1.1 transfer speeds on my network to the NAS server (it takes about 65% longer to transfer data over my network to the server than it does to transfer data from my old laptop with a USB 1.1 port to an external USB hard drive).

I have an ethernet network with a desktop and a laptop connected to the NAS server via a FastEthernet (10/100) switch (and everything is pretty much sitting on the same desk, so we're not talking long distances here). Each PC (running Win2K on a desktop and a laptop) has a 10/100 ethernet card and, according to the switch, is running at 100 Mbps. The NAS server is an old PII 200 Mhz with 128 MB RAM. The hard drive on the server is 200 GB ATA133; however, the IDE ports on the server motherboard are only ATA33, so that clearly limits things on that end. Yesterday, I backed up my laptop (about 10 GB of data compressed by my imaging software, Image for Windows, into about 6 GB) to the NAS server and it took between 4 and 5 hours (for the backup alone, a validity check took another 3 hours).

If you extrapolate that timing to an 80 GB backup (assuming there is a full 80 GB of data being backed up), you get about 53-67 hours (for the backup) -- or 2-3 days. So, again, I'd say 8 days is a bit extreme.

For my tastes, even 2-3 days is way too long for a backup. I can do a hard drive-to-hard drive backup of 80 GB within the same PC in less than 3 hours -- I can even backup to an external USB 2.0 hard drive in about that time. Anything that takes too much longer is not really a satisfactory solution for me.

Let me clarify this comment because, on a second read, it sounds like I'm slamming NASLite -- and I'm not. I'm just describing what I've been experiencing.

I realize that my network is a collection of many parts, most of which are old. The fact that I can even use these parts for a NAS server is testament to the utility of NASLite+. I tried some other options -- such as a full Linux install, which was too slow on my old PC, and another NAS OS (Darma), but my old PC wouldn't even boot under Darma -- but NASLite+ was the only thing that worked (and it was, by far, the easiest option to set up).

I suspect my expectations may be a bit unrealistic, nevertheless, at the end of the day I'm benchmarking in my mind based on what I've been able to do in the past (as described in my post above). At this time, my current NAS setup (of which NASLite+ is just one piece) isn't meeting my expectations. Maybe I just need to lower what I expect to be able to do with all of this old stuff.

NASLite+ is certainly working as I expected. My NAS setup, overall, is not -- at least, not satisfactorily.

An excellent backup solution that works well with NASLite:

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

If you are looking for a solution to backup important files on a regular basis (as opposed to making a disk image), also try:

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

Also try:
http://www.snapfiles.com/screenshots/SyncBack.htm

or

http://sourceforge.net/projects/backuppc/

Just an update to what I posted the other day. Maybe my new switch just needed to be "broken in." Yesterday I backed up some files from my desktop and my laptop PCs to the NAS server and I was getting sustained transfer speeds over the ethernet network of 3.8 GB - 4.5 GB / hour. In some cases, I was getting bursts of over 100 MB/minute -- according to my LAN monitoring program (Karen's LAN Monitor). That's not USB 2.0 speed, but it's much better than what I was getting the other day. I'm a little more satisfied, now.

How long had your NASLite box been up since the last reboot? I've found on mine, it takes a long long time to really come back to life after a reboot. I wish we could disable those smart checks, or schedule them somehow.

Even then, you can see the transfer rates take a hit about every 5 minutes when it does the smart checks and regens the html for the status pages.

@lusid: are you asking me, or the forum in general?

I personally shut down my NAS server periodically. Usually, it runs for several days at a time with no problems -- typically during the week. I may shut it down if I'm going away. I only use it for backing up my desktop and laptop, so if I'm not using either of those, the NAS server doesn't need to be on.

I haven't really noticed any problem with the SMART checks. It may degrade the performance momentarily, but unless I'm doing a full disk image (rather than just backing up changed files) my transfers only take a few seconds -- so it's not a big issue.

With NASLite+ you can disable the SMART checks. I did that at first, but I have a quirky PC I'm using for a server and I turned SMART checks back on to keep it from going into power-saving mode (otherwise, it goes to sleep on me and doesn't seem to wake up when I try to transfer files).